[PATCHES v4] Encourage explicit arguments for --decrypt in "show" and "reply"

Daniel Kahn Gillmor dkg at fifthhorseman.net
Tue Dec 19 08:40:52 PST 2017


This is a clean revision of the series that was first introduced at
id:20171212001858.706-1-dkg at fifthhorseman.net.  It needed to be
rebased after Jani's boolean/negation series.  It should now apply
cleanly.

I think it's important to apply this series before releasing 0.26,
because of the interaction between Jani's boolean/negation series and
the introduction of a keyword-based --decrypt for the indexing
subcommands.  For consistency, it would be unpleasant if some commands
offer --no-decrypt, while others require --decrypt=false.

Background
----------

The notmuch indexing subcommands ("new", "insert", and "reindex") now
have a --decrypt option that takes an argument (the decryption
policy), since the session-keys patches have landed.

But the viewing subcommands ("show" and "reply") have their
traditional --decrypt option that (as a boolean) need not take an
argument, having --decrypt not present means something different from
either --decrypt=true or --decrypt=false.

This series allows the user to explicitly choose --decrypt=auto for
the viewing subcommands, while allowing people to use the
argument-free form (as an alias for --decrypt=true), but warns the
user to encourage them to switch to using an explicit argument
instead.

This is useful normalizing work for the interface, so it's worthwhile
on its own. It is also necessary preparation in the event that we
decide we want to:

 * set up a notmuch configuration option that changes the default for
   --decrypt for the viewing subcommands

 * allow "notmuch show" to actually index encrypted messages upon
   their first encounter (e.g., via a new decryption policy, which
   i'll propose separately)

Regards,

        --dkg




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